Five days after teams for the inaugural Women's Premier League (WPL) were announced, Vanitha VR, the former India cricketer now part of Royal Challengers Bangalore's (RCB) scouting team, sent out a tweet for a "once in a lifetime opportunity" for women cricketers in Karnataka. If you happened to be a woman fast bowler who could bowl 130kmph, she wrote, she wanted bowling videos sent across in an email (note the ID: rcbwomenscouting@gmail.com) along with the player's contact details.
In the absence of a scouting blueprint and extensive video footage and in-depth data to fall back upon for the domestic talent in women’s cricket, teams did not shy away from thinking out of the box ahead of the inaugural WPL auctions. Or, in most other cases, revert to the old-school way of seeking information and inputs from those with their ears to the ground.
Beyond the money-attracting Mandhanas and Jemimahs and Shafalis and the other well-known members of the Indian team, the challenge for the five teams was in picking the right fits among the more obscure domestic players—the uncapped, inexperienced, under-19 Indians.
That’s where franchises of the men's Indian Premier League (IPL) rely on a robust and almost year-round scouting system. And that's where with women’s cricket in the country, which isn’t played with as much regularity and televised as extensively, the WPL auction presented a different test for franchises.
For, as RCB’s director of cricket Mike Hesson said, “you can't just sit on your phones and get the numbers or a whole lot of information about them”.
{{/usCountry}}For, as RCB’s director of cricket Mike Hesson said, “you can't just sit on your phones and get the numbers or a whole lot of information about them”.
{{/usCountry}}“There’s enough footage of the international level, not so much domestic. Even the data, in terms of strike rates and stuff, is pretty obsolete in some of the games they are playing," the New Zealander said. “It’s, therefore, more about being able to go out and get a number of different eyes on players, so you can validate your information.”
While RCB had their scouts tracking matches of the recently-concluded Senior Women's One Day Trophy, the support staff of the other teams got in touch with various coaches of the state teams in order to get a deeper insight into the domestic players of interest to them.
The presence and role, therefore, of the likes of Vanitha, Anju Jain (assistant coach, UP Warriorz), Hemlata Kala (assistant coach, UP Warrioz), Nooshin Al Khadeer (bowling coach, Gujarat Giants), Mithali Raj (mentor, Gujarat Giants) and Jhulan Goswami (mentor and bowling coach, Mumbai Indians) grew manifold. All of these former national players are still strongly associated in the women’s cricket domestic circuit in various capacities.
The reason why there is a significant Railways imprint in the domestic buys of the Gujarat Giants; the highly successful domestic women’s team is coached by Nooshin. And that RCB have managed to complement their star buys with the “exuberance of uncapped Indians (wait and watch them)”, as RCB's head of scouting Malolan Rangarajan tweeted, courtesy of the presence of Vanitha in the setup.
“Not just my (knowledge), Nooshin has been a coach in the domestic circuit for many teams," Mithali, Nooshin’s former Railways teammate, said. “Seeing these players from close quarters, I know where I can fit them in the composition of the team.”
Similarly, Jhulan said her role of mentoring the Bengal players helped, and that she could get hold of whatever data and video footage was available from across the country to identify and shortlist potential domestic buys for MI.
“Data is important, even more so in women’s domestic cricket. Because we don’t see them on a regular basis on television," the former India pacer said. "Collecting match videos too becomes very important. That is how we have gone about our work in picking domestic players. Honestly, it was not easy, but it was a great experience. Probably next year, with more time, we’ll have more scouting options.”
Lack of time—the BCCI announced the successful bidders on January 25—was also a hurdle in putting together a scouting process in place. Parth Jindal, the DC co-owner, admitted they did not have enough time to prepare, but that “that’s where people like Hemlata come in”.
“IPL has been around for 15 years. This is the first year (for WPL). There wasn't any sort of scouting, there's no depth of talent, at least known to people. That was the biggest challenge,” Rangarajan told RCB in a pre-auction video.